All posts in category kitten

Below are some of the many pets killed at the Memphis pound on July 12, 2016. The complete records, as provided by the city via FOIA request, can be found here (part 1) and here (part two).

This is one of four kittens who lived at MAS for a week. Records indicate the kittens were housed in FERAL 01, were eating cat food well and would sleep together in a pile. There are no notes indicating any of the kittens were sick, malnourished, or losing weight. All four were killed on July 12 when MAS suddenly determined, after they’d been apparently thriving for a week, they were too young to survive. Oops?:

This cat’s intake condition was listed as “injured” on July 7 but there are no notes that any veterinary care – even an examination – was ever provided. It’s unclear if he truly was injured. Romeo was killed for “time/space” on July 12. Oops?:

Kitten ID 288617 was part of a litter surrendered to MAS. The family was housed in cage number ER 04:

All the kittens’ medical notes are identical and were presumably copied and pasted into each individual record on July 9:

The family was killed on July 12 because three of the kittens had colds:

This would appear to be the kittens’ mother, Mona. Her record indicates she was housed in cage number ER 04, with her litter:

MAS provided no medical notes for Mona so presumably, none exist. (She was not the only pet killed by MAS on July 12 for whom no medical notes were provided.) Mona was killed on July 12 for having a cold. There appear to be no records supporting this claim:

This is Molly, kitten ID 288616 at MAS. She was housed in cage number FERAL 01, just like the kittens who were killed for being “too young”:

Molly’s age is listed on her cage card as 2 months. Her medical notes on July 9 appear to have been copied and pasted from records belonging to Mona’s litter of kittens who were described as newborns and housed in ER 04. Note that on July 9, Molly’s apparently incorrect notes state she has a cold but on July 10, “none noted” appears next to URTI, seeming to reaffirm that Molly was indeed healthy:

Molly, who was apparently healthy and whose records appear to contain notes from a different litter of kittens, was killed for having a cold on July 12. Oops?:

These are two of four pups who were killed despite having a rescue offer to take them after MAS determined they had been exposed to parvo. Note that their “outcome” indicates “transfer – rescue”. Oops?:

Local animal advocates report that the Memphis pound has never once filled all of its roughly 550 cages since its opening several years ago. There are always many empty cages at MAS, yet animals are still killed for space which, like the overwhelming majority of killings at MAS, seems to make no sense.

In the fall, MAS will reportedly bring in Target Zero, a group which has targeted and created zero no kill communities and which advocates for dumping lost cats lacking identification back on the streets instead of sheltering them. Afterward, MAS will reportedly adopt a plan to continue killing pets for time/space (or not) for another 3 years before ending the practice. Killing for being too young/or not, having a cold/or not, being injured/or not and for having a rescue on the way will continue forever, I guess, since none of these excuses are being addressed by the new director. And in fact, she’s signing off on them left and right.

Look, I don’t know if some or all of the animals killed by MAS on July 12 were killed by mistake. Maybe some or all were killed intentionally – despite being healthy or in some cases, treatable, despite cage space being available, despite having rescue on the way – whatever. What I do know is that killing shelter pets is wrong.

Euthanasia to end the suffering of medically hopeless pets who have been given a poor/grave prognosis by a veterinarian is something completely different than killing. It’s part of animal sheltering – a very small part. Words matter. Attempting to whitewash the needless killing, by mistake or by design, of healthy/treatable pets by referring to it as “humane euthanasia” is wrong.

The main focus of any animal shelter should be lifesaving – immediate and responsible lifesaving. If that is ever to be the focus at MAS, it must start with a director immediately and responsibly committed to it. It appears that MAS, as ever, is lacking in this area.

Some in Memphis want to excuse the new director’s killing by claiming “these things take time”. To my mind, that is nothing more than enabling the behavior. I don’t need to wait and see how many more animals MAS puts into the dumpster over the next three months, three years or three anything. Molly is too many. Mona is too many. Romeo is too many. Every pet at MAS who is left to die in his cage or is killed under the guise of “humane euthanasia” when he isn’t medically hopeless and suffering is too many.

Kitten ID #287452 was brought into the Memphis pound on Tuesday, May 31, 2016. The MAS vet noted he had a soft tissue ulceration near the tail base and was underweight. The kitten’s weight was recorded as 9.3 ounces. A note was entered into the kitten’s record that he should be transferred out immediately and not be kept overnight:

This kitten was left alone overnight in a cage to suffer until he died. His remains were discovered the next day.

***

Kitten ID #287971 was brought to the Memphis pound by the owner of the litter on June 17. The owner requested euthanasia because the kitten was lethargic, not nursing and had crawled away from the mama cat and siblings. The kitten’s weight was recorded as 10 ounces.

This kitten was left alone in a cage to suffer until she died. Her remains were discovered during vet rounds the same day she was brought in for euthanasia.

***

Kitten ID #287672 was brought to the Memphis pound on June 7. The kitten’s weight was recorded as 1.4 pounds. On June 10, a veterinary evaluation was requested because it was noted the kitten had diarrhea. On June 11, the kitten was seen by the vet and the following notes were entered into his record: Age was corrected from 9 weeks to 6 weeks. Not eating well, no interest in food, underweight, recommended for transfer to foster care and recommended to see a vet. Really.

This kitten was left alone overnight in a cage to suffer until he died. His remains were discovered the next day.

[Volunteer Carla] Adkins says she intervened. “I told the guy I’m going to go ahead and post this online and see if I can find a nursing mom real quick,” Adkins says. The intake worker agreed to let Adkins submit the kittens to Dallas Animals Services under her own name and address. The intake worker, Adkins adds, appeared to understand that she would hunt for a foster home. “He said, ‘You’re going to try to find a rescue for these cats?’ And I said yes,” Adkins says.

Ms. Adkins says she went out to her car and began posting on Facebook about the 7 kittens. Within 4 hours, she had a foster lined up but it was too late:

“The kittens were euthanized because they had a poor prognosis,” the shelter’s operations manager, Dr. Cate McManus wrote in an email to Adkins. “This heat is deadly to these little guys. They dehydrate so quickly. I am so sorry. If your foster is interested I can divert the next set of healthy neonates to them. We are always looking for nursing moms.”

The heat. So deadly. You know what else is so deadly to these little guys? Fatal Plus. Plus they were dehydrated and until someone invents a thing called fluids, there’s no hope. Oh but hey, if you want the next batch of kittens that comes through the door, let me know and I’ll hold off on killing them. Kittens, so delightfully interchangeable.

Dallas Animal Services Director Jody Jones and McManus told the Observer that the intake worker failed to indicate to the vet team that foster arrangements were being made. Jones expressed regret that Adkins didn’t receive a phone call before the kittens were killed. “Carla did offer the capacity to network those kittens; she should have gotten that phone call, and we’re devastated that we failed her and those animals,” Jones said. The intake employee, Jones says, “certainly could have been more proactive in helping us” find a new home for the cats, though the employee blamed Adkins for the misunderstanding.

“He thought Carla was just mentioning she was going to try and network the animals, and left it at that, as opposed to feeling that she was going to find a place for the animals,” Jones said.

Oof. The intake worker didn’t tell the vet not to immediately kill the kittens because he thought the volunteer was making some effort to save them. Which is totally different than feeling that same thing. And he wasn’t proactive. And my head hurts.

The intake worker was not a city employee but came from a staffing agency. He won’t be doing his thinking and feeling at the pound in future.

McManus would like the irresponsible public to know that this is the first time the Dallas pound has been caught killing pets whom rescuers were trying to save since the last time they got caught in January.

McManus and Jones apologized at a news conference at the time [of the January killings] and said they would give staff additional training to ensure that animals with foster homes are no longer killed. “In a situation where animals … had a foster or adoption home in place, that information should be in the computer,” McManus told reporters.

More violence at the long troubled pound in Columbus Co, NC – this time, reportedly due to an ACO who “accidentally” left a dog’s cage unlocked and “accidentally” left the door to a room housing cats unlocked then went home for the night. Oops. Director Rossie Hayes told a local paper:

The ASPCA and the Mayor’s Alliance are teaching more people how to gut pregnant cats whose kittens are so close to being born that they would survive the gutting. Euphemistically referred to as “late term spay”, this horrific practice inflicts violence on both the mother cat and her unborn babies. Once cut out of the mama cat’s belly, each kitten helplessly crawls around until someone kills her. Mama is sewn up and, if she survives the risky procedure, is left to grieve for her kittens whom she knew were alive inside her when the ASPCA vet gave her an injection and are now inexplicably, heartbreakingly gone. So much for that prevention of cruelty to animals thing.

And all this needless killing can be kept off the shelter’s books since the kittens are not counted as intakes – only the mama cat. So the shelter’s live release rate can be touted as an achievement even as it masks the killing of kittens deemed so valueless by the shelter they were never even counted as being alive, despite the fact that they most definitely were.

When I saw a link tweeted by the Mayor’s Alliance and the Feral Cat Initiative on Twitter advertising the ghastly “workshop” above, I chimed in with my two cents:

To be clear, yes there is always a possibility that a kitten, just like any other living being, might die prematurely from an accident or illness. There is also an excellent chance that she might not, especially if shelters do their jobs to protect life and get homeless animals adopted. But it is absurd to attempt to justify the killing of viable kittens, ripped from their mother’s belly, in order to protect them from the possibility of premature death. Late term spay is premature death for kittens. Death doesn’t get any more premature than that.

I am not saying it’s easy for shelters to handle all the pregnant cats they receive. I get that it’s a challenge. What I’m saying is that it’s wrong to kill the kittens who are alive inside these pregnant cats and that option shouldn’t even be on the table at any so-called shelter, let alone a routine practice.

Reaching out to the community for assistance with temporary foster homes is one way to allow the kittens to be born without placing any burden on the shelter. Partnering with feral colony caretakers is another tool which allows shelters to keep tabs on mama cats and kittens within colonies in order to trap animals at the right time for spaying the mother and taming/adopting the kittens.

There are always alternatives to killing and groups like the ASPCA and the Mayor’s Alliance should be the ones leading the way in protecting the lives of animals. Instead they are promoting the heinous practice of killing viable kittens while inflicting emotional and physical harm to mother cats.

The first four kittens on the list were killed because of their “behavior”. I guess the person holding them in their hands must have been mauled after these photos were taken. The complete records, including all veterinary notes, were requested. The only records provided by the city of Memphis were copies of the cage cards. Records indicate that the behavior of these tiny kittens was so unmanageable, they could not be scanned for a chip or weighed. But all four kittens had their records marked “no chip” at the time they were killed.

The next two kittens on the list were killed because MAS staff didn’t have “time” to take care of them. The complete records, including all veterinary notes, were requested. The only records provided by the city of Memphis were copies of the cage cards.

MAS killed the last four kittens on the list because they were “too young”. Kittens have that tendency. It’s not a permanent disability but when you operate primarily as a pet killing facility like MAS does, any excuse will do. The complete records, including all veterinary notes, were requested. The only records provided by the city of Memphis were copies of the cage cards. Note that all four kittens were killed before their “review date”, the date the city says must expire before the animals can be photographed or networked by Memphis Pets Alive to save them from the kill room.

But don’t criticize, they’re doing the best they can, we all want the same thing, blah.

Mama cat and newborn kittens, saved by a member of the public in Ohio. Because kittens. (photo by Casey Post)

The Greenville Co pound in SC has implemented two new policies concerning cats:

1. Kittens born at the pound who weigh less than 100 grams will be taken from their mothers and killed immediately. The reason, as stated in an e-mail written by Susan Bufano, the community relations coordinator for the Greenville Co pound, in response to a concerned citizen:

It is not a normal, healthy birth weight and our vet has determined that they will probably not survive.

“Probably not” indicates to me an inherent admission that there is some hope for survival. And I think that hope is very reasonable, considering the following:

This government study which looked at newborn kitten weights in five different cat breeds found that only two breeds, Maine Coon and the Norwegian Forest Cat (both large cats), had kittens which averaged more than 100 grams at birth. The other three breeds studied – Birman, Persian, and Siamese/Oriental Shorthair – all had kittens whose average weight at birth was between 82 and 97 grams.

A random veterinarian I found via Google wrote: “Kittens have a normal birth weight of 100 ± 10 g (3.5 ± 0.35 oz). Kittens with a birth weight of less than 90 g (3.2 oz) have poor survival rates.”

Given this information, it’s not at all clear to me that the Greenville Co pound policy is based in science. That is, the notion that kittens weighing less than 100 grams at birth “will probably not survive” appears dubious, at best. And to be clear, taking newborn kittens of any weight away from their nursing mothers in order to kill them is something only monsters would do. Kittens have a right to live and their mothers have the right to care for them. No animal “shelter” policy trumps those rights. Any “shelter” staff members who do not recognize that fact should resign immediately, before any additional animals are harmed due to their failures.

The other new policy at the pound:

2. Orphaned kittens under one pound are deemed “rescue only” and must leave the shelter within three hours. The reason, per Ms. Bufano’s e-mail:

We want our fosters to focus on the animals who have the highest likelihood for survival[.]

It was so hard on wonderful, loving fosters to take these neonate kittens home only for them not to thrive (and, the small weight also ended up indicating illness in the mothers) and pass away, regardless of how hard they cared for them. I witnessed the agony of many fosters who blamed themselves, when we all know that some kittens just don’t make it. They will be fine one day and die the next.

So, the decision was made to save the animals that had the most chance at survival. In doing so, we are anticipating more life saving, not less.

Wow, apparently it takes a whole mountain of bullshit to allow monsters to sleep at night.

By branding pets “rescue only”, shelters shut out an enormous pool of potential help: the general public. It’s not a good strategy to increase lifesaving. Also bad: using phony we-care-about-rescuers’-feelings as an excuse for killing kittens. How did someone even think this twisted thing up? Also also bad: requiring rescue groups, typically operated out of people’s homes on shoestring budgets, to somehow get orphaned kittens out of the Greenville Co pound within three hours of arrival.

Rescuers often have day jobs, families, and other pets in need of care and will rarely be in a position to drop everything in order to quickly snatch kittens from the kill room at the pound. That is, assuming the pound has promptly notified rescue contacts by mental telepathy since e-mail or voicemail obviously won’t suffice in these situations. How would you like to be the rescuer who checks her e-mail at lunch or after work and finds out a litter of orphaned kittens you would have been willing to save was killed by Greenville Co because you didn’t check your messages sooner? How is threatening to kill newborn orphaned kittens consistent with the county’s purported concern for rescuers’ emotional well-being?

While those who kill shelter pets instead of doing their jobs often blame the so-called irresponsible public for the killing, it is the shelter staff, following antiquated and inhumane policies designed to kill pets instead of helping them, who are to blame for the killing. In fact, no rescuers, fosters, adopters and no one outside of the Greenville Co pound should blame themselves for the needless killing being done there.

Greenville Co pretends to be interested in lifesaving and pretends to care about the emotional toll taken on the compassionate public willing to help shelter pets, all the while implementing policies so cruel and archaic, no one with a conscience need perform more than a cursory examination to determine how heartless and inconsistent with animal sheltering those policies are. Shame on Greenville Co for pretending to care. There are few worse things in this world. And they do those there, too.

Added, April 19, 2014:

Bringing up from the comments, from spaycritter, for those wanting to know who to contact about the needless killing of kittens at the Greenville Co pound:

At issue is the pound’s failure to hold the cat for the mandatory five day stray holding period so that his owner could reclaim him.

The lawsuit names Mobile County and three employees, Andrew Stubbs, Carmelo Miranda and Donna Jones as defendants, claiming the employees violated a shelter policy placing a five-day hold on animals between the time they are received and when they are euthanized. There are a total of four counts including outrage, conversion, conspiracy and negligent supervision. Hughes is asking for a jury trial to consider compensatory and punitive damages.

“[The shelter] has a five-day stray hold policy for this very reason, if somebody lost a pet,” Barnard said. “It’s certainly not a 30-minute stray hold policy.”

Making a tragic situation worse, the pound staff attempted to cover up the unlawful killing when the owner came looking for her pet. The staff eventually admitted they had killed Porkchop but later claimed he had been brought to the pound in a trap and was determined upon impound to be feral.

The owner’s attorney has obtained “a statement and pictures from the neighbor showing that the cat rode to the shelter in his lap and was acting like a normal, domesticated pet.” The attorney contends that because Porkchop was admitted near the end of the day, the pound staff was too lazy to set up a cage for him so killed the pet instead. Mobile Co is in the wrong here, in so many ways:

Killing healthy/treatable cats, whether tame or feral, is wrong.

Killing cats upon impound is wrong.

Evaluating cats’ behavior at time of impound is wrong.

Failing to hold a cat so the owner can find him is wrong.

Lying to the owner who is looking for her cat is wrong.

Fabricating a story about the cat being feral is wrong.

Anyone advocating for the removal of mandatory holding periods for stray cats lacking identification needs to remember Porkchop. His owner was looking for him and wanted him back. Had the staff at the Mobile Co pound done their jobs as required by law, Porkchop would be living at home today. Presumably most AL shelters, though not Mobile Co obviously, abide by the law and hold unidentified stray cats so their owners can reclaim them. If the stray holding period law were to be removed, there would be no legal protections in place to allow cats like Porkchop to be returned to their rightful owners.

On June 26, 2013, Merced County authorities served a search warrant at Last Hope Cat Kingdom – a pet sanctuary in California. Merced County Spokesman Mike North was on site during the raid and later talked to the local ABC affiliate:

He said many of the animals were severely emaciated, some had their eyes swollen shut, and others were infected with diseases. A team of veterinarians from across the state evaluated the pets and euthanized about two hundred of them on site.

Approximately 100 additional pets were removed from the property. North indicated that Merced Co AC had been monitoring the sanctuary and that prior inspections had all been satisfactory:

County officials said they have received past complaints about the non-profit, but inspections never revealed any problems, until last week.

“Spot checks were done by Merced County animal control and confirmed the poor conditions of the facility and the animals that were housed in them,” said North.

A Sun-Star review of Animal Control records revealed the agency transferred close to 2,000 kittens to Last Hope Cat Kingdom over a five-year period, nearly four times the number allowed by the rescue’s county-issued permit.

[…]

Last Hope Cat Kingdom’s permit allowed a maximum of 125 cats, but the county’s Animal Control sent 1,969 kittens to the facility through its foster group from 2009 to 2013, an average of 393 animals per year.

According to the Animal Control foster and rescue reports, the agency continued giving kittens to Last Hope Cat Kingdom’s volunteers up until the day of the search, June 25. Six kittens were transferred to the rescue group on the same day authorities raided the facility.

The average age of the cats given to Last Hope by Merced Co AC was 2 weeks. Last Hope was reportedly the only group that would accept bottle baby kittens and it was widely known that if Last Hope didn’t take the kittens, AC would kill the them. The pound would call Last Hope to pick up bottle babies an estimated 4 times a day during kitten season each year. Last Hope co-founder Renate Schmitz faced the same predicament as many other overburdened rescuers in areas where the local shelter doesn’t do its job:

Schmitz said her rescue sometimes stopped taking animals from the public, but said it was hard to say “no” to Animal Control. “If you don’t take them, you know they will be killed or euthanized,” she said.
[…]
Animal Services Manager Rick Blackwell acknowledged using Last Hope Cat Kingdom as the agency’s main rescue group for bottle babies, but said the nonprofit could have stopped accepting more animals.

Or the shelter could have stopped killing baby cats and started doing its job. Expanding the foster network jumps to mind, as does issuing pleas to the public on social media as bottle babies arrive at the shelter.

Dave Robinson, county Animal Control director, said in a recent interview that he was unaware the agency was sending that many kittens to Last Hope.
[…]
“One thing you have to remember about bottle babies is you probably have about 8 percent of them surviving,” Robinson said.

The veterinary literature reports intimidating mortality rates for orphaned kittens up to 12 weeks of age, ranging from 15% to 40%.

15, 40, 92 – whatevah, whatevs. It sounds like the director is attempting to whitewash his pound’s failure with orphaned kittens by implying they were going to die anyway but that is outright false. Many good shelters scramble during kitten season to get fosters and rescuers lined up for bottle feeding duty because it’s their job and because most of those animals survive.

And remember those “spot checks” and inspections the county spokesman had said AC was conducting at Last Hope? In light of the fact that the Sun-Star exposed AC had been giving the sanctuary kittens hand over fist, including the day of the raid, I wondered if the county was going to walk those inspections claims back:

“We would never knowingly create a problem,” Blackwell said. “If we had knowledge there was an issue, we would stop sending animals there.”

[…]

Blackwell confirmed that animal control officers visited Last Hope only when there was a complaint. The most recent complaint was filed in 2010, so it had been almost three years since a thorough inspection.

[…]

Robinson acknowledged that Animal Control hadn’t inspected the rescue annually. “I think going forward we realized we do need to have a role in the process,” he said.

[…]

Robinson said it’s possible that Animal Control officers were unaware Last Hope could have no more than 125 animals since the permit was issued in 2003 and by the Planning Department.

“Back in 2003, Animal Control knew what that number was, but over the midst of time, I think the number got lost,” Robinson said.

Oh please. More like: We weren’t doing our jobs but instead foisting our failures onto an overburdened rescue group. We tried to kill our way out of it with 200 on site kitten kills and lie our way out of it with claims of inspections and ignorance but then we were exposed by the local paper. So now, uh The Midst of Time and stuff.

No charges have yet been filed against Renate Schmitz or anyone at Last Hope Cat Kingdom.

Reader Dot rescued this orphaned litter of 3 week old kittens from the landfill – which is where they’ll be sent if she takes them to her local pound. Dot has a full house of canine fosters and is unable to care for these kittens. They are not eating solid food yet and will need to be bottle fed for a little while longer before they transition. If anyone can help, please contact: